2020: A Year of Giving

2020 has been a rollercoaster of a year. Defined not only by Covid-19 but by the incredible ways in which our local communities and the businesses that operate within them have worked together to facilitate real meaningful change.

Despite the victories, 2020 has seen local communities face immense and sustained challenges. So as we close in on 2021 we look back at not only the things that made the biggest positive difference but to the future for good causes and how we can continue to work together to ensure they can continue their important work.

The Neighbourly Community Fund 

Back in March, when the UK went into its first lockdown, we knew that without emergency financial support, many of the local good causes across the country would struggle to cope with the anticipated surge in demand. 

The ability for us to react quickly with the creation of the Neighbourly Community Fund was testament to the care and dedication of our partners who knew just how important a role local communities would play in supporting the most vulnerable in our society through the pandemic.

Within days of announcing the fund, M&S, Aldi, Lidl, Nutricia (Danone), giffgaff and Coca-Cola EP had donated almost £500K. Shortly after, additional funders Heineken, Southern Coop and Jefferies International brought the total to £1.2M.

We have processed over 3,100 applications to the fund in £400 microgrants to our network of vetted good causes. Recipients of the Community Fund grants estimated that the money helped them support an average of 340 people per organisation - over 1 million people in total - all the while facing an unprecedented rise in demand and uncertain future.

How good causes adapted during the pandemic and spent their grant money gave us great insight into the current biggest needs of our local communities, as did stories directly from our community heroes.

Community surveys

Throughout the year, thousands of our community of good causes have given us tremendous insight into not only the impact of the programmes and campaigns that have been running, but how the pandemic has affected their operations and the number of people they have supported.

Our summer community survey revealed that Covid-19 has forced organisations and their volunteers to transform their services, with almost 75% completely remodelling and 46% forced to temporarily pause one or more of their usual services. 

Our winter community survey, carried out in November, showed that demand has not slowed, with many charities facing concerns over ongoing access to essential funding to get them through the winter months.

Causes continue to work hard to keep services running however, with a increase to 80% in the number of organisations remodelling services, over 50% calling on the help of people in their community and a quarter using the help of friends and family.

Launch of the Neighbourly Foundation

The launch of the Neighbourly Foundation this year has been a pivotal step for us which, following on from the Community Fund, offers a permanent solution for grant giving.

The Foundation, and accompanying grant-making functionally, means that we can now deploy funds more efficiently and in real-time - using our network of over 15,000 causes to get support into communities where the need is greatest.

The Foundation is now supporting all of our ongoing grant schemes and current fundraising has allowed us to open a new fund for local causes tackling hunger and food insecurity. 

Even more giving

Direct donations to the Community Fund hasn’t been the only way our partners have supported local communities in 2020.

Throughout the year Southern Co-op has been awarding grants as part of its £100k Safer Neighbourhoods fund to support causes that are working to reduce crime in the South of England. 

In Spring, Neighbourly worked with publishers Penguin Random House UK and Hachette UK to distribute a cumulative total of over 30,000 books whilst GiffGaff and Doro partnered to donate 500 phones and credit to older isolated people.

GiffGaff also ran a number of programmes, including offering grants directly to causes supporting LGBTQ+ and BAME communities. Its latest campaign also allows customers to donate a percentage of any profit made from recycling their old mobile phone to the Neighbourly Foundation.

This year saw the Neighbourly Foundation partner with M&S SPARKS - enabling a percentage of customer purchase value to go to local good causes.

In addition, staff at Cadent raised tens of thousands through its match-funding programme with staff getting creative to continue raising much needed cash during lockdown.

Partner generosity through giving programmes has continued through the festive season - which we eagerly shared on Giving Tuesday - with this year’s Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve food surplus donations expected to be record breaking.

As we head into 2021 we will also start to see the results of the B&Q Foundation’s grant programme which is helping good causes to refurbish community spaces to benefit those who are experiencing poor quality housing and homelessness.

Tackling Hunger

As many of you will have seen, tackling the hunger faced by thousands of people, in particular children, has been brought to the forefront of the government this year - in part because of Marcus Rashford’s high-profile ‘End Child Food Poverty’ campaign which was strongly supported by many of our partners.

Based on our own community survey, we estimate around 60% of all the causes we work with provide either food and/or activities to children in deprived areas - including the provision of holiday hunger programmes.

Businesses are looking to do more than ever before when it comes to tackling this issue and we’re excited to have partnered on new campaigns that will play an important role in supporting food charities and community groups that look after children and families.

Over the summer ALDI donated hundreds of food vouchers and summer sports kits to charities looking after children during the holidays whilst more recently Lidl’s Tackling Hunger programme has made it even easier for customers to donate to their local food banks.

Southern Co Op has also launched its ‘Feed a Family’ fund, offering extra micro-grants to causes including food banks and community fridges that are supporting those struggling with food insecurity.

Launch of Remote Volunteering

At the start of the first UK-wide lockdown, our employee volunteering programmes were drastically affected. Many required a physical presence which, with new social distancing and safety measures, was almost impossible.

What businesses could still do however, was offer their skills and time remotely to charities, from wherever they were in the world.

Following feedback from our good causes that remote volunteers were very much in demand, we kick started our remote volunteering programme in June which allowed employees to offer their skills and time to support good causes with remote tasks.

The response so far has been phenomenal. We’ve seen employee volunteers from Danone UK and Ireland, Coca-Cola EP, the RSA, Samsung UK, M&G, Heineken UK and the Football Association offer thousands of hours of combined volunteer time, supporting local causes with everything from marketing, fundraising and tech to letter writing and befriending.

Platform improvements

With the onset of the pandemic this year came a greater need for grants and emergency payments to be distributed as quickly as possible. 

With that, our development team has worked hard to design and integrate some impressive upgrades to the platform’s backend grant payments system - meaning we can react with even greater efficiency and speed to any future emergencies on a local level.

Our development team has also recently released a series of design enhancements to the platform. 

The new designs provide us with an improved layout and better accessibility of key content and impact measures across all pages. Company and campaign page updates mean that programmes and donations are now being showcased better than ever before. 

This release was closely followed in October by a design refresh across all of our good cause pages. We’re working closely with our charity leaders to make sure page content is up to date and is providing us with accurate detail on current projects and areas of need. 

Maintaining our commitments

Neighbourly as a business has continued to work to advocate for local communities and standing by its values. 

In June we called on the Prime Minister to create socially just and green recovery from Covid-19 and were one of fifty major signatories in support of maintaining the temporary increase of £20 a week for those in receipt of Universal Credit as part of the Keep the Lifeline campaign.

This year we were also accredited by the Good Business Charter and are preparing for re-accreditation as a B Corp after being one of the first businesses to gain the accreditation in the UK when it launched in 2015. We recently teamed up with Forster Communications and Danone UK and Ireland to talk about what being a B Corp has meant for us during the pandemic.

Focus for 2021

2021 will be a critical year for environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) reporting as businesses more than ever focus on measuring the sustainability and societal impact of their programmes and operations. The government’s recent documentation around taking account of ‘Social Value’ in the award of central Government contracts is also serving to highlight the increasingly important element of this aspect to public procurement.

You may have also seen in October that the Big Four accounting firms alongside the World Economic Forum developed a set of metrics for companies to use for ESG reporting internationally. 

At Neighbourly, the next few months will be focused on refining our systems for measuring and reporting on the internal and external outcomes of our giving programmes and standardising the social and environmental impact reporting that we supply back to our partner businesses.

To stay up-to-date on the fantastic work of local good causes throughout December and into the New Year, check out the #HiddenHeroes hashtag on Twitter or follow us @Nbrly.